NIH's New Grant Policy, an Earth-Like Alien World, and 'Unsustainable' Biomedical Research

The National Institutes of Health is dropping a policy that gave researchers only one chance to revise a rejected grant application before having to start over with a new idea—a rule that was especially hard on young investigators. Instead, the agency will allow an applicant to resubmit the identical proposal as many times as they like as a new submission.

Ever since the first exoplanet was discovered in 1996, astronomers have been scanning the heavens for another Earth: a rocky planet orbiting its star at just the right distance for it to harbor liquid water and thus, potentially, life. Now, sifting through data collected by NASA’s Kepler orbiting observatory, they have discovered just such a planet, although it’s not quite Earth 2.0. Named Kepler-186f, the planet orbits a star that is less than half the size of the sun and much cooler.

Beards are everywhere these days. From the urban lumberjacks of Brooklyn to the hirsute hackers of San Francisco, men’s faces have taken a turn for the hairy. But according to one theory of evolutionary population dynamics, the look is destined to die down because of its own popularity. And now an experiment involving 3 dozen bearded men lends credence to the prediction.

The U.S. biomedical science system "is on an unsustainable path" and needs major reform, four prominent researchers write in an opinion piece published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Researchers should "confront the dangers at hand,” the authors write, and “rethink” how academic research is funded, staffed, and organized, according to Science Careers.

Feeling peeved at your partner? You may want to check your blood sugar. A new study suggests that low levels of glucose in the blood may increase anger and aggression between spouses. The researchers say their findings suggest a connection between glucose and self-control, but other experts disagree about the study’s implications.